Black and White
by AsphodelRose87
Summary: What happens when Regulus Black begins to see that his brother Sirius is not an irresponsible ungrateful, that his favorite cousin is actually a murderer and not a heroine, and that unlike what his mother did claim, muggle girls can be much more interesting and beautiful than many pureblood witches? This is the tragic tale of how Regulus learned he was fighting on the wrong side.
1. First Lesson: Wizarding Supremacy

**All my eternal gratitude to Litfreak89, who is always so kind to take some of her spare time to correct my stories :)**

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Walburga Black hated having to walk down the muggle road on which she lived. Sometimes, she really cursed her ancestors for choosing to build their family home in an area so crowded with muggles! Not that the area was bad; in fact, Islington-Angel was one of the nicest places to live in London, and Camden and Notting Hill were fairly popular choices among many wizarding families who had decided to settle down in the country's biggest city.

Sometimes, Walburga had ardent discussions with her husband (and cousin) Orion regarding the decision of moving out of the city to one of the family's countryside properties. The family's manor in Windermere was spacious and opulent; or perhaps they could move to their small cozy cottage home in the village of Tinworth in Cornwall. However, Orion had never been a nature lover. He was a man of the city, and he loved the liveliness of the English capital far too much to give it up to live "like a farmer in the middle of nowhere," as he usually described it.

On this particular sunny afternoon in July, Walburga was walking back home with her two sons – Sirius, her firstborn at nine years old, and Regulus, the youngest, who had just turned eight. She held their hands tightly as she feared that they might try to escape from her grip while they were walking toward the square located near their house. It was a beautiful, tree-lined square, full of flowers with a small playground for the kids. The only drawback was that it was always plagued by dirty muggle children. Therefore, it wasn't very surprising that she had never allowed either of her sons to spend any of their free time at the playground – no matter how inviting the weather was outside. She would never let her precious babies be contaminated by that kind of scum.

Regulus was walking with his mother and older brother after coming back from visiting their old aunt Lucretia, who lived in a very small town near the bother of Wales. The only exciting occurrence for the boys was that they had gotten to travel by Knight Bus because their mother didn't trust him and his brother enough to travel alone through the Floo network on such a long journey just yet.

He looked jealously at a group of children who were playing together at the park. Usually, Sirius was the only playmate he had, and his brother wasn't really known for his companionship except on the infrequent occasions that their mother would decide to have an afternoon tea with one of the Ladies of High Wizarding Society who had children around their age. All three of his cousins—Bellatrix, Andromeda and Narcissa—were far too old to play games with him. It's not surprising, then, that Regulus was a very lonely boy.

Regulus turned and caught a glimpse of two extremely identical twin sisters who seemed to be around his age and were playing together with their dolls not very far away from them. An older boy was teasing one of the girls, trying to put something in her hair. The three children all had similar coloring – possibly siblings. The woman near them, whom Regulus thought to be their mother, was completely unaware of her children's behavior as she was reading a book and looked deeply entranced. Regulus looked to his brother, who had also spotted the scene. Immediately, Sirius let go of their mother's tight grip, dashed toward the muggles, and took the doll from the girl who was being bullied by the boy whom Regulus believed to be her brother. His brother and the muggle boy exchanged a shared smirk before running as far away from the girls as possible.

"Miss Morgan, Alfred and that boy took my Emily away!" The girl complained tearfully to the woman whom Regulus had previously believed to be their mother

"SIRIUS BLACK! COME BACK HERE NOW!" Regulus heard his mother shouting, letting him go from her grip.

"Those silly boys are going pay for this!" the sister of the girl whom had just had her doll stolen said loudly, more to herself than to her sister. "Wait here, Belle," she said before standing up and running after both boys, hunting them around the playground. Sirius and the boy named Alfred started throwing the doll to each other, making the girl run in two different directions. Regulus noticed that the other sister was still sitting on the grass, not far away from where he was, silent tears running from the girl's wide eyes. Regulus couldn't help but feel compassion for the muggle girl. Why did his brother never miss an opportunity to be a complete prick?

"Alfred! You are so dead when I get my hands on you!" the twin chasing the boys screamed to her brother.

"_Alfred! You are so dead when I get my hands on you!_" The boy mocked her, speaking in a falsetto girl's voice. "_That's not a very lady-like thing to say, Helen!"_ The boy made fun of her again, impersonating another voice, a serious, fatherly one.

The girl, Helen, Regulus assumed, showed Alfred her tongue before turning around to chase Sirius, who was holding the doll at that moment. Somehow, Sirius had managed to climb a tree, and he was laughing at the girl's efforts to chase him there.

"You're not so big now, are you?" Sirius laughed again and exchanged another mischievous grin with the girl's brother while watching her pointless efforts in climbing the tree.

"SIRIUS ORION BLACK! GET DOWN HERE NOW!" Walburga Black screamed with unbelievable strength. Walburga was near the tree that Sirius had climbed, standing beside the muggle girl who was still trying to climb the tree and recover her sister's doll.

"Hey mate, I'm free here!" Alfred said to Sirius from the other end of the park.

Sirius, who had noticed that Helen was having some success in climbing the tree, decided that it would be much more fun to throw it to the other boy. However, the doll fell on the ground not very far from the spot where Regulus was still standing. The other boy, Alfred, was running towards him to get the doll once again, but Regulus decided to go and get the doll first and to be finished with all of this nonsense once and for all.

Regulus picked up the doll, and Alfred smiled at him, believing that he had decided to join their game. However, Regulus looked down the boy with the arrogant derisive glare that the Black family was famous for, and that he had learned to give since he was a toddler. Then Regulus walked to the girl who was still crying on the grass and offered the doll back to her.

"I'm sorry for disturbing you Miss, but I believe that this belongs to you," Regulus said, offering her the doll back.

"T-Thank you," she said, trembling before she smiled at him. He smiled back, and they continued to glance each other's way for a few seconds until his mother, who was pulling Sirius by his ears, looked at him and screamed, "REGULUS! NOT YOU TOO! COME BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!" With one last apologetic look directed at the girl, Regulus went down to where his mother was standing. He immediately felt pain when her hands gripped tightly on his right ear. "BOTH OF YOU ARE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE!"

Without exchanging any words with the muggles in the park, she dragged both of her sons to her house. Once there, she pushed them straightaway to the dining room before she shouted at them again.

"HOW DARE YOU?! BOTH OF MY SONS, INTERACTING WITH MUGGLE SCUM? YOUR FATHER AND I WILL NOT STAND FOR THAT!"

"But I haven't done anything!" Regulus complained, feeling that she was being very unjust with him, as it had been Sirius the one who had started everything.

"YOU TALKED TO THE MUGGLE! YOU TOUCHED A MUGGLE POSSESSION REGULUS."

"But mom, I was only trying to be a gentleman! You told me that…" Regulus start to say, but he was cut off by his mother.

"I've taught you to be a gentleman, yes. But you need to be a gentleman around people that deserve such treatment! I haven't raised any of you to be integrating with muggle scum. Both of you are grounded." Both boys started to protest when she said that. "For an entire week," she declared.

Both boys looked extremely disappointed. Regulus looked at his brother with rage.

"Kreacher!" she called, and the house-elf appeared with a POP. "Make sure these two young men are locked up in their rooms." Turning back to the boys, she said, "I want both of you to write me an essay telling at least ten reasons why wizards should not interact with muggles. I want a one-meter-long, Hogwarts-styled essay. You two are only allowed to leave the room to research in our family library and go to the bathroom. No dinner tonight."

Sirius rolled his eyes while Regulus nodded his head in acceptance.

"If the essays aren't good enough by next Friday, both of you are going to have to give me twenty reasons instead of ten. Now, get out of my sight!"

Without exchanging words, both brothers left the room and went up the stairs.

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**A/N: So, this story is a short outtake from my main fanfiction 'Lost Connections'. Though you don't need to read one to understand the other, if you are following my other story you might have guessed correctly that the version of the facts that Sirius told to Harry isn't completely right.**


	2. Second Lesson: Muggles can be charming

Fifteen-year-old Regulus Black couldn't believe sometimes the things he would do to save his older brother's ungrateful neck. Here he was, in front of a muggle's home, about to ring the door bell to drag his brother back home – before their mother decided to do it.

There are a couple of things that are impossible for you to do together and not become good friends; stealing a doll from a poor seven-year-old girl is probably one of them. Since the day Regulus's brother and Alfred had tortured that young girl, Sirius would find any opportunity to escape from the Black household and run straightway to the White's place where Alfred and his two sisters lived. As ironic as it all was, the White boy and his brother had become as close as flesh and blood brothers. This isolated Regulus even more, leaving him only Kreacher, whom he would beg to play with him. Granted, Sirius had invited him to be a part of their 'muggle' games, but Regulus had refused to give his parents even more distress than they already had. Furthermore, play with muggles? Only his brother Sirius could come up with such nonsense like that!

Regulus used his pocket handkerchief to avoiding touching the muggle's door's bell ringer. He waited until a girl one head shorter than he was opened the door. She had her hair tied up in a ballerina's bun, and her facial features appeared to be extremely delicate. She was wearing a ballet skirt and a muggle jumper over her suit, hiding her body shape. Regulus would deny it even under torture, but the fact was that the girl had made his heart beat faster.

"Are you one of Sirius's stupid friends?" she asked, analysing him from head to toe. "They are all in the basement. Second door past the stairs," she said, opening the door for him and moving aside to let him in.

But Regulus didn't move; he stayed where he was, trying to find the right words to speak to her.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not Sirius's friend. I'm his brother. Could you please inform him that our mother is looking for him, quite desperately, and that I would urgently advise him to come back home immediately."

The girl looked at him carefully as if she was expecting him to pull a prank on her at any second, but then she realised whom he was.

"Yes, of course! I know you! You are the boy who saved my doll ages ago. I haven't seen you around since that day. If Helen and Miss Morgan hadn't seen you as well, I would have probably believed that I had imagined you," the girl said, giving him a large grin. "Nice to meet you again; my name is Annabelle, but you may call me Belle." The girl extended her hand as if waiting for him to shake it and introduce himself.

However, the only thing that Regulus could think about was how he could manage to get out of that situation. Even though his mother's voice was shouting in his head that he shouldn't touch her dirty muggle skin, his body screamed, begging for her touch. He ended up taking her hand, covering his hand with his ever-trusted handkerchief.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Belle. I'm Regulus," he said, letting her shake his hand the muggle way. Regulus had never greeted any woman like this before, as he had learned from his mother that the correct way to greet a woman would be to give a soft kiss to the back of their hand.

"Regulus. Would you like to come in?"

"I'm sorry if I sound impolite, but I must refuse the invitation." Regulus stopped for a second before answering her, choosing his words very carefully. "I'm in a bit of a hurry, and I would be eternally grateful if you would please fetch brother for me."

"Well, why don't you go down and talk to him yourself? The distance between here and our basement is the same for both of us," she answered, looking deeply into his eyes. Regulus caught himself wondering what kind of muggle spell that girl could possibly be using on him to make him feel so hypnotized by her appearance. "Come on; you needn't be scared of my house!"

Regulus remained still while he considered the implications of this invitation. He was extremely proud that he had never stepped into a muggle household in his life. What would his parents say to him if they knew that he had gone willingly into one? What would his favourite cousin, Bellatrix, say when she found about the situation that he had gotten himself into? The girl's charming face was enough to point out to him that the only thing he could get out of this situation was trouble.

"I'm sorry, Miss White, but I must insist that I stay outside."

The girl opened her eyes widely, making them even bigger than they normally were. "May I dare ask you the reason for this unreasonable invitation refusal?"

"I'm sorry, Miss White, but as much an exuberantly charming young lady as you are, there's no way of denying that some bloodlines are simply superior to others. Ignoring this fact would be to deny my natural superiority, a sad fact that unfortunately goes beyond things that you could possibly understand."

Regulus finished this sentence, looking down his shoes, hoping that her small muggle brain wouldn't be able to fully understand all the facts that he had harshly told her. However, her face showed that she had more than understood exactly what he had meant.

"Mr. Black, are you trying to say that you consider yourself better than me and my family? Because if you are, I believe that I might have misjudged you. For a moment, I thought you were different than your brother, but now can I see that you are as much of a jerk as he is."

It was Regulus's turn to look at her with shock. People usually told him how different the two Black brothers were. Sirius was a Gryffindor while Regulus was a Slytherin; Sirius was a bully while Regulus was a geek. Regulus did anything possible to please their parents while Sirius would do anything he could to make them feel annoyed.

"Right. So that's what you think of me?" Regulus asked her, outraged by her comparison.

"That's exactly how you are portraying yourself to be."

At this moment, a second girl appeared at the door. She was clearly Belle's twin sister, but instead of a ballet costume, she was wearing a fighting kimono, a green belt tight around her waist. Instead of a ballet hair bun, she had opted to tie her hair into a neat ponytail.

"Who is this?" Belle's twin asked.

"Black's jerk brother," Belle answered her sister.

Her sister's sighed. "Second door after the stairs. Try not to break anything, okay?" said the unknown twin.

Regulus was about to open his mouth to protest and tell her sister that he couldn't come in when an older woman appeared at the doorway.

"Lovely! You both are ready. Come on; let's go. We don't want to be late for your classes." Only when the woman was outside did she notice Regulus standing in front of the house. "Hello, young man; how can I help you?"

He was about to answer the woman, but he was cut off by Belle's twin sister. "He is here for Alfred's stupid gathering."

The old woman gave her a severe glare, but it was to Regulus whom she was looking at when she opened her mouth. "Second door after the stairs," she said, holding the door widely open for him to pass. "Come on in, boy; we don't have the whole day!"

Regulus looked to the woman; she had that severe glare in her eyes, which were enhanced by her square glasses.

"Shall I lock you in, or shall I lock you out?"

Regulus didn't answer her question. Instead he took a deep breath and entered the White's house for the very first time.

The first thing that Regulus noticed were pictures on the wall that didn't move; the second thing were some very weird muggle-looking machines that he had never seen before in his life. After using his hankie to open the door that the three women had indicated, he went down the stairs to the basement. When he arrived, he saw a group of about ten teenagers, the majority of them boys. There was a band playing some music, and it was with complete shock that Regulus realised that his brother was the vocalist of the band.

He was even more astonished when he realised that he actually knew two other people there from Hogwarts – the Potter boy and the little one who looked like a rat. Potter was the first one to notice Regulus's presence in the room.

"WOW, SIRIUS! LOOK AT WHO IS HERE!" James Potter shouted to his best friend.

"REGULUS? What are you doing here?" Sirius answered, completely shocked. "No, don't tell me! You realized that this thing about blood supremacy is a bollocks myth, right? Come join the good lads club!"

A small group of teenage girls that were there cheered at what he said. Regulus felt a huge wave of nausea when the youngest of the girls approached him, touching his arm.

"Are you going to introduce your friend to us, Snuffles?" the girl asked Sirius while trying to keep holding on to Regulus, who was trying to avoid touching her at all costs.

"Amy, this is my baby brother, Regulus, aren't you, little Reggy?"

Regulus looked as if he were being forced to smell something extremely disgusting. "Sirius, we need to talk. Privately," Regulus said to his brother and walked up the stairs.

Sirius exchanged curious glances with the other marauders before following his brother up.

"This had better be important, Reggy. As you could see, I was in middle of something…"

Regulus shook his head in disbelief before speaking to his brother. "How can you do that?! Be surrounded by muggles like that!"

"If you are here to badmouth my friends, I think I can classify this as an unimportant reason," Sirius said, turning his back to his brother.

"Mother is looking for you. It's only a matter of time until she realises where you are. You need came back home, Sirius; Bella's wedding is tomorrow, and we need to be at the Lestrange's manor by noon!"

"I'm not coming! I refuse to attend a Death Eater's wedding. You can tell that to her."

"Sirius, you need to be more reasonable! Bella is our cousin. Our parents are going to be very embarrassed if you are not present!"

"I couldn't care less for what the Wizarding High Society thinks about me! Tell them that I'm staying at James's house until the first of September."

"Sirius! You can't do that to our mother! She is going to die of disgust! She might even disown you!"

"Well, I'm not going to be there. She's going to have to deal with it! If she wants to disown me because of that, so be it then. I don't want any part of a family who supports Death Eaters breeding anyway. Now, if you don't mind, I need to practice. We have a show tomorrow."

"You're so selfish, Sirius! You don't even care about how other people feel."

"And you are naïve for eating up all this rubbish our parents have thrown at our heads! For Merlin's sake, Regulus! Don't tell me you don't know about all the things that Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange are involved in?"

"They are fighting for an honourable cause, Sirius!"

"Regulus, _are you insane?_ Since when is killing innocent people an honourable cause?" Sirius said, completely astonished. "You know what, Reggy? Stay there with our parents and the rest of our family at that despicable wedding! You guys deserve each other!"

After saying this, Sirius slammed the door in Regulus face, leaving his younger brother completely lost in his deep thoughts.


End file.
